John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi everybody,

This board came highly recommended on GS and I would like to start by thanking John Sayers for putting this board together.

Over the years I have struggled in the basement with my home studio set up. It works, but only if nobody is home, which is quite a rare opportunity. Foot traffic is the biggest problem with being in the basement, and the only way to solve it seems to be to decouple which would drop the ceilings way too low. Ideally, when we were looking for a house, we were looking for something with a large room that could sit next to the house, but we fell in love with this place and that was the sacrifice I made.

My Wife actually suggested me converting our garage, which has taken me further down the rabbit hole of sound treatment and isolation. Our garage is bigger than average, the internal measurements are approximately 21 feet x 28 feet.

The concerns of doing this project comes down to both noise entering and noise leaving. An occasional motorcycle, garbage truck or helicopter could certainly ruin a recording take. If I was building this from scratch, had the space to do so, and wanted to deal with variances on a building permit, I would be looking to build storage closets and recording booths surrounding a large live room. But for this project the goal is to keep as much sqft as possible.

If we were to move forward with this project I would be looking to jack up the garage and add either cinderblock under the foundation or extended the studs to get a ceiling height between 12 and 16 feet tall. The first obstacle is to figure out which option would be better in doing so, and of course the cost of it compared to the budget and reward.

There is one double garage door in the front made of heavy steel which might be the biggest challenge for isolation. I have thought of a few options regarding dealing with this: 1) Insulating the garage door and installing an insulated commercial grade roll up behind it to give double insulation and air gap; or 2) completely eliminating the function of the garage door and insulating behind it with studs.

The walls have solid wood on the exterior side of the studs and use the typical 16" spacing. I originally was considering staggering studs with this project, but have seen that double studs with a 1" gap can achieve STC levels of almost 70. That figure assumes double drywall on both sides, so it may not get so high with the wood planks and I made need to seal the seams of the planks. Double studs seem to remove about 1/2 a foot of floor space, so I am still determining if it is worth it, considering I still have to add acoustical treatment to tame reflections also. I planned on insulating both sides on the wall with mineral wool in either case.

The ceilings would be insulated with mineral wool and drywalled as well, and if it was not enough I would consider insulating the roof with mineral wool.

The floor is concrete, which I read should be my friend in this situation, but still am wondering if much a large truck could shake the foundation enough going down the road.

As for the interior drywall, I have pondered the effects of using 4 smaller pieces of different density boards, for example: 1/4" drywall, green glue, mass vinyl, green glue, 1/4" cement board, green glue, 1/4" drywall, green glue, 1/4" drywall, verses just 2 x 5/8" drywall and green glue, which seems to be time tested as a standard. It feels like the different layers, dampening properties, and separation should have an effect.

As cool as this project sounds, the basics come down to if it will be quiet inside enough to record at a whim and on a regular basis. It's not that I am surrounded by these sounds, but as I have thought about this project I have taken notice to when I can hear a helicopter, motorcycle, delivery truck, or lawn mower from inside the house. Of course the house has windows which aren't the best insulators of noise.

I will try to post updates on this project as I read more and figure things out and hope to hear from others who have been down this road before.

AnalogNoise wrote:
As for the interior drywall, I have pondered the effects of using 4 smaller pieces of different density boards, for example: 1/4" drywall, green glue, mass vinyl, green glue, 1/4" cement board, green glue, 1/4" drywall, green glue, 1/4" drywall, verses just 2 x 5/8" drywall and green glue, which seems to be time tested as a standard. It feels like the different layers, dampening properties, and separation should have an effect.

Hey dude, That is a HUGE garage. I am so jealous... but also the thought of doing the work in a space that large would give me nightmares. haha.

I'm in the building stages of my own garage (which is a lot smaller), and am seeking advice on this forum and others as I go, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I'm sure the more experienced guys will chime in with other thoughts and questions as time goes on.

First, I highly recommend you buy and read "Home Recording Studio - Build It Like The Pros" by Rod Gervais. That book will answer 90% of your questions and give you an extremely strong understanding of what you need to do. It is worth every penny.

Second, in the book, and on every thread on this website and others, the exact topic of using and combining "different sizes and density materials" vs the standard 5/8" drywall is discussed a lot. The long and short of it, is the reason it is a "time tested as a standard", is because it is... TIME TESTED AS A STANDARD. lol. It is the cheapest way to get the most mass. Forget mass loaded vinyl, forget cement board, forget trying to combine different thickness drywalls and other materials... Just stick to lots of layers of 5/8" type X drywall. it's the cheapest mass available, and the most effective.

To give you an example. A roll of 4' x 25' mass loaded vinyl will cost you around $200. That's $2/sqft. 3 sheets of 5/8" type X drywall (which is 96 sq ft) costs roughly $25. That's $.26 cents/sqft. And here's the kicker. If you cut a piece of mass loaded vinyl to the same size as a sheet of 4'x8' 5/8" type X drywall, you would get a very similar amount of sound isolation. So why would you spend $2/sqft when you could spend $.26/sqft to do the exact same thing? Sound doesn't care how much the mass costs. You are talking about thousands of dollars in savings by just buying the correct materials, and putting them in the right place.

The book will explain ALL of this. Spend the $30 for the book and save thousands of dollars on material costs for your project. I promise you, you won't regret it.

Also, don't get tied to STC ratings on products. STC ratings are used for how a product can attenuate speech. It is not helpful at all for music other sound sources that span the frequency spectrum. Again, the book will go much more in depth with this, and so will a lot of peoples build threads on this website. You'll learn a ton by just reading other peoples stories, and the answers to their questions.

Good luck!